


will these hands never be clean?

by aesphantasmal



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, I haven't listened to the new episode lmao, I promise the handwashing thing is not supposed to be weird, M/M, Other, also I did macbeth for gcse english, also. yknow. lots of things on handwashing technique about, blood tw, everything's. fine, i think lmao, implied murder tw, in the way that saying a character spends half a fic washing his hands might imply, it's supposed to be a theme damnit, nureyev is not ok and has not been for a very long time, peter. babe. go to therapy, with an implied happy ending, wormed their way into my brain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:41:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23071870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesphantasmal/pseuds/aesphantasmal
Summary: The thief does not want to be a man tied to his past, even by himself.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 9
Kudos: 42





	will these hands never be clean?

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back again. you know the drill. it's pretentious, it's disorganised, it's not beta read, it's 1k-2k words, I wrote some of it at 2am but it's only 10pm right now, enjoy.

A teenager stands in the bathroom of the New Kinshasa spaceport and washes his hands.

He's been washing them for a while now, scrubbing every inch of skin and meticulously cleaning under every nail until his skin is rubbed raw.

He already disposed of his bloody clothes. The stolen uniform would have drawn attention even without the large red stain. He burned it as soon as he got an opportunity, took an outfit off of a rack in some upscale department store. The clothes do not fit him properly, the trousers coming up a couple of inches short, but he's used to that by now.

He discarded his glasses as soon as he lost the guards. He could see without them to an extent — he had for many years — and he knew how much they changed the look of a person's face.

He had cut his hair as soon as he found a public bathroom somewhere, hacking off most of its length with a stolen pair of scissors. It was messy, but he wasn't going to risk taking any longer to fix it before getting off planet.

He discarded his name in that room. He can only hope it was worth it. He cannot wait around to find out. He has already picked up a new one, but that only needs to get him off of Brahma. Once he chose his name, saw his name as an expression of his own freedom, then aspired to have it become a symbol for others. Now he discarded it in the hope that it could shield others.

He stares in the mirror, and sees somebody who is not the person he woke up as this morning staring back at him. That person had aspirations, ambitions, hopes. Now he was just fighting to stay alive.

But his hands are still his. He makes a fake interplanetary passport in a bathroom stall in half an hour. He plucks creds from pockets and items from store shelves like he always has. And even though he must have washed all the blood off by now, he can still smell it, swears he can still see droplets on his hands.

… He's being ridiculous. He can't stay here. He dries his hands, leaves the bathroom and blends back into the crowd, just another teenager in the spaceport, while the screens flash up pictures of a person that just happens to resemble him.

* * *

The agent picks up the mask with a layer of plastic between him and it, stopping him from getting the gore that used to be the inside of the entertainment executive's head on his gloves. They were expensive enough that he didn't want to throw them away for no good reason, even if he hadn't  _ purchased _ them, exactly. The agent has never been particularly bothered by blood in and of itself, but the detective looks like he might be about to puke every time he even looks in the case's direction. Of course, he may have to at the very least get his coat to a good dry cleaner. There was at least some blood left in some of those syringes, and it would probably leak at some point. The clothes were not to his usual style — Dark Matters were considerably more inclined towards drabness in their uniforms than he was in his clothing, but a Dark Matters uniform was a useful thing to have.

The agent talks about the etymology of his name. He's proud of this one, finding a name that fit his theme in a long dead language. It's been a little difficult to find new names he hasn't used before in the last few years, given how many names he's had and how many people he's been.

His gloves end up covered in blood anyway, after the detective takes a set of spikes to the arm for him. Somehow, him saying he had never tried eating cologne was endearing. He patches him up like he's patched himself up so many times, and cleans the blood from under his nails with a steady, practiced hand.

After the murderer had been apprehended, him and the detective made their way back to the detective's flat. His hands caress the detective's cheek, pull him closer by his coat, run up his sides, slip inside his coat and pull out a safe key. Then they are caught behind him, as the detective proves he is not some easy mark. They work behind him as he writes a note and leaves it for the detective to find. And, once he escapes from the idiots the detective left him under the watch of, he grabs the mask and vanishes.

* * *

His hands shake as he pours what little water the anthropologist gives them, splitting between himself and the detective. His face is gaunt and aged in a way that is distinctly unflattering. You could count the bones in his fingers or his ribs, and he could have sworn he saw some grey hairs earlier.

The detective was much the worse for wear. There was not enough water to completely wash the streaks of blood from his face. There was grime and blood under his nails and over his hands, and he had an almost constant migraine. 

Here, he has no name. To Miasma, he is just a thief. To Juno, he is something worth bleeding for. And maybe that is enough. As far as he's concerned, Juno is something worth bleeding for too, even if the detective may not see it.

* * *

He thinks about leaving Mars after he escapes, leaving the detective to his fate and getting out of there. He learns they have been down there three weeks. It's time lost, time he could have spent doing other things, and if he fails to rescue the detective or they try and fail to stop the anthropologist, he will become one of the millions of dead on this planet.

Still, he cannot leave the detective in that place.

He sneaks up behind one of the assistants. Even if they could cry out, they wouldn't have had time to. He takes the uniform and walks back into the tomb he had escaped from.

* * *

The thief washes Martian dust out from under his nails.

The thief does not want to take a trace of Mars with him.

It's not easy — it gets into every crevice, every corner, and clings to fabrics and fibres.

Still, he tries all he can to remove every speck. Whenever he thinks he's done, he finds more.

He considers just burning some of the affected items.

He keeps washing his hands until they are raw and red.

When he returns to Mars, he wears gloves.

* * *

The thief knows the crew do not trust him.

The captain, at least, trusts him enough to send him on an important job. Other crew members do not seem happy with that.

He does not know what the hacker might know. She recognises him from when he was the agent, but he does not know any more than that.

The detective doesn't trust him. The thief doesn't even need to look at him to know that. He'd made his feelings perfectly plain, and the thief had no interest in rubbing salt in to see if the wound was still open.

* * *

The thief looks in the mirror. Did he always look this tired, this old? He had to get a stronger glasses prescription not too long ago. He can't navigate without them anymore. He has been melucticiously dying over every grey hair as soon as he escaped the tomb, sonthinging every wrinkle in anti-aging cream since long before then. The thief cannot allow himself to grow old.

* * *

The detective is not bleeding when they finally make it back to the ship, the globe in his hands. The thief is not either. It's a welcome change for the two of them. The only thing the thief has to wash off of his hands is glitter.

-

The detective comes to talk to him.

It is, maybe, the first time they've ever fully been on the same page; the first time the detective has decided to show and the thief has decided to look, and he sees the steps forward the detective has taken, the person he is trying so hard to be. And the thief has learned the lesson he has learned before about not underestimating the detective, though this time he may find himself keeping it in mind, not trying to purge it from himself along with everything else that could affect his equilibrium and force him to permanently adapt. The thief has changed many times in an attempt to survive. The detective has changed in an attempt to live, and maybe the thief can do the same.

Nureyev places his hands in Juno's hands, and Juno laces their fingers together and smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> comment or ill steal ur kneecaps


End file.
